


Nomenclature

by Darkmagyk



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Drabble, Established Relationship, Language, M/M, Meta, Queer History, meta disguised as fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:54:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25695352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkmagyk/pseuds/Darkmagyk
Summary: Yusuf Al-Kaysani reflects on the imperfect words of the 21st century.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 7
Kudos: 118





	Nomenclature

**Author's Note:**

> This ficlet deals with the historical constructions of marriage and how that might be viewed compared to a modern lens.

When the young ones call their beloveds their husbands, it always makes Joe frown. He tries to understand what they mean; he really does. But all this history is so small and recent. These changes in marriage and in men. It changes what feelings are supposed to mean. And people now use words that sound performative and mercenary.

There is a youthful playfulness to boyfriend that is out of step with who they are. And partners sounds like they own a business together.

But husband?

Yusuf had been a husband before. He was not one to Nicolo. He would not want to be.

They are a love from which could flow great bliss and great wrath. They are shield brothers and beloveds and soulmates.

He had been a husband before.

He had been Fatima’s husband. And despite his hopes and attempts, he had not been so good at it. Their fathers had arranged the matters. The dowry had been scrapped. Contracts had been signed and duties had been fulfilled. She had been… nice? He remembered being disappointed in what she looked like when they actually met, but not _what_ she’d looked like. And then he had gone off to Jerusalem and died and fallen in love and hardly thought about her except to worry for a brief time if perhaps he’d left her with a child.

It does not bother Nicolo nearly so much. His own expectations are lighter. He had never been a husband. He’d been the youngest in his family and destined for the church, and by that time Rome was beginning to crack down on priests and their brides.

But Nicky wants no husband either. What are husbands but creatures to come between a knight and his love. He wants to be no one’s husband.

No contract, no shared property or children, can be compared to the love one finds in battle and in a bedroll afterword.

And as for God, well, they met fighting for him, did they not. The same God brought them together and kept them together.

It wasn’t as though they had not known lovers before. Nicky still says he does not know, some days, if he joined the crusade a penance for that sins or to follow a man he’d loved in boyhood. Joe, for his part, had often joked with Ali that he gave him the best parts of himself, at poor Fatima’s expense. Was that why he’d been so disappointed with how Fatima looked? She had been Ali’s cousin, perhaps they had not looked very much alike. That memory is long past for him.

He has very little need to dwell on the past in such ways. He has Nicolo di Genova at his side and at his back and in his bed.

They are no one’s husbands. Not anymore.

And they never wish to be again.

What would be the point of reducing their feelings to contract law and property agreements. 

Together they are all and they are more. 

**Author's Note:**

> I know a lot of people love to call Nicky and Joe husbands (including the actors) and I think it is fun and cute. But it also sometimes sits weird with me because of the historical conceptions of marriage and queerness I've studies. So I wrote about it. 
> 
> Check me out on [tumblr](http://darkmagyk.tumblr.com/).


End file.
